大象传媒

This story was submitted to the People's War website by a volunteer from CSV Berkshire, Amy Williams, on behalf of Doug Bukin and has been added to the site with his permission. Doug fully understands the site's terms and conditions.

Towards the end of the war, I started cycling from my home to the Southwest Essex Technical College about four miles away. I didn't mind cycling there and it wasn't too tiring for me. When I look back, I realise that we were all thin but healthy and fit. The only fat people were the black market spivs and their families.

Things were pretty quiet then except for the occasional air raid. We suddenly became aware of flying bombs, the V1s or the 'doodlebugs' as we called them. You could hear their pulsing ramjet engines approaching, and when the engine stopped you took cover. Once the engine had stopped they would glide to earth and explode causing a lot of damage. I was very keen on film and filmmaking as a career, which I did do later on at the Denham film studios. The manager of our local Odeon knew that I had this interest and offered me unpaid work experience in the projection room. I jumped at it and fairly soon I could run all the machines myself.

One hot summer's evening, while it was still daylight, I went out onto a platform on the top of this Art Deco tower. The Odeon was built of white marble with red and green lines at the side of it in the Art Deco style. I went out there to cool down a little as it was a hot evening. Whilst I was up there, a doodlebug came towards me, the engine stopped, I panicked, tried to get back into the projection room, but the bloody door was jammed so I couldn't get back in! So I was stuck on this thing with it stopped over the top of me and I thought: "oh no!" Luckily it continued to glide - probably further than usual - it glided down to earth and exploded harmlessly on the bank of the King George V reservoir which I saw from up there with relief.

V1s looked like torpedoes, rather pointed torpedoes, with another truncated torpedo shape on top of them that was the engine. A V1 had little short stubby wings and this ramjet engine. It was a very crude engine as it was a rocket in effect, a paraffin driven rocket. They'd set them off from Germany on a launch pad with a certain amount of fuel in them measured just to reach London. They had gyros on them to actually get them into the right direction so it was very hit and miss but they did hit, they often hit London. It was mostly during daylight, I don't remember them at night.

Hearing them was the worst thing. You'd hear them coming at a distance, it didn't worry you while the engine was going; you'd think "mmm, that's fine", but if the engine stops, run for cover! Jump into cover somehow or other. I couldn't of course on top of that tower on the Odeon.

After the V1s came the V2 rockets. Silent death, quite frankly, because you never heard them coming. They travelled at faster than the speed of sound so when they landed and exploded that was the first thing you knew. They had a tremendous explosive charge. Then after the sound of the explosion you'd hear the rushing sound of them coming through the sky but by then it was too late anyway. They actually affected the morale of people to a certain extent because you just didn't know where the enemy was, you didn't know where it was coming from. Well, you knew where it was coming from but you didn't know where it was going; there was no indication that it was going anywhere because by the time it exploded it was there. It was a strange thing. It was the uncertainty of it that affected people. During all of this we never lost our morale, and strangely enough, so we learned afterwards, even through the very heavy bombing of German cities we underestimated the Germans. They kept going as well - they didn't want to give in, after all it's not a natural thing to do.

My grandparents' house in Walthamstow was partly hit by one of these V2 bombs. It was partly damaged and we went over there to clean it up. It was totally indiscriminate bombing. The Germans didn't know where the V1s or the V2s were going, as long as they hit London that's all they wanted. The trajectory of the V2 - it went up miles into the skies. The scientists who produced these rockets later helped the Americans produce the rockets that went to the moon. Due to the propaganda at the time, we didn't know what they were. I don't think the government did at first or if they did they kept quiet about it. We just thought it was a stray bomb, they didn't tell us until later on what they actually were. We knew explosions were coming from somewhere or other, but we had no idea that it was these huge rockets coming over. The rockets were large with a two-ton charge on the front. All we did get to know was that obviously there were big bits of it blown apart when it landed. You were putting the pieces together and you could recognise the fact that this was not an airplane. It was a strange looking bomb; we thought what the heck was it? It did come out in papers eventually, what it was, and it was on the news as well. Again, they didn't want to say too much about it because it would have alerted the Germans that they were on target.

Things went on like this for while but at last we began to realise that we might be winning the war. In the evenings, we saw the thousand bombers raids going over the top of our house, flying from the airfields near our house to Germany. We could see all these Lancasters, flying fortresses, and many others. There were supposed to be a thousand, we must have seen five or six hundred flying over our house at nighttime. It was a great feeling of satisfaction. Some people may say but you were bombing Dresden and places like that, fine, but they came over bombing Coventry, Southampton, Bristol, London. I really regret that we had a war at all. Killing people was unnecessary. But if someone hits you, you hit them back harder to try and win what you're doing, and that's what I hope speeded up the war. Now, I don't know if the bombing speeded up the war as I think the Germans kept their morale as we did.

A lot of our evacuees were coming back at that time, and coming back to the schools and things were getting a lot more normal except for the rationing and shortages. Then VE day came: celebrations, street parties, tables and chairs out in the streets and whatever food and little luxuries we could rustle up to have for the party. I can remember going up to Trafalgar square in the evening, I must have been about fifteen or sixteen I suppose, with all the crowds of people celebrating. Outside Buckingham palace, the King and the Queen with princesses Elizabeth and Margaret, a tremendous cheering, the atmosphere was marvellous. One of the things that was most noticeable was the lights going on. Blackout was over. The first time for six years. It was wonderful. That was in the evening, and six long years of war had come to an end.

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